motherhood

Some writers write words that come off the page like two hands cupping your face, inviting you to slow, to focus, and to simply listen. Just slow and listen to this.

Hilary Yancey is one of those writers and she finally wrote a whole book. Here is a taste of her writing and then you can go put on your tennis shoes and run out to get her book. Or just go to Amazon Prime because you’re not an animal.

We were late to our eighteen-week ultrasound. Preston surprised me with a lunch date at a farm-to-table restaurant just outside Waco. I had been picking at my salad throughout, then picking at my dessert. Ever since the positive pregnancy test, ever since the scribbled note of “large baby for gestational age,” I had lived on a live wire of worry.

This ultrasound, which was the reason for the lunch, the reason for the celebrating, was full of fear. An ultrasound could declare that things hadn’t gone according to plan or it could bless us with uneventful normalcy, with everything as expected. I had worried for days that it would be the first, and as the ultrasound approached, I became convinced that something was wrong, that we would learn something terrible that Friday afternoon.

I sat sullenly at our celebration lunch, listlessly moving the lettuce around on my plate with my fork. Preston tried several times to ask me why I didn’t seem very peaceful or excited. He tried to remind me that we were seeing our child for the first time. Instead of answering his question, I picked a fight with him about the fact that we would be late right as the waitress brought over our check.

It was raining while we drove back, and I wasn’t dressed for it. My thin cotton skirt was covered in wet splotches. I pressed my hands against it, feeling my gooseflesh beneath.

We arrived and I was called back fairly quickly. Preston stood up to join me, but the nurse told him to wait, that they would “call Dad back later.” I followed the nurse back silently, holding my wallet in my hands because my skirt didn’t have any pockets. Once I was on the table, the technician started to swirl the transducer probe over my belly only to declare irritably that she couldn’t see much because my bladder was too full, and gestured to a bathroom across the narrow hallway.

I stood up and walked meekly to the bathroom. I was mad that I had been late, mad that I had tried so hard to drink the eight necessary glasses of water a day only to be told it was wrong. I am the kind of person who, upon deciding that she has just done the entire day wrong, cannot be persuaded otherwise. I had failed the morning; I had failed lunch with my husband; I had failed the ultrasound; I had failed this baby. I washed my hands and slunk back into the room.

The exam was completely silent. The technician commented only once, to express frustration that the baby moved so much that she was having trouble getting good pictures of the face. She sighed multiple times, tracing the same circles around and around, shifting in her chair. When she said that the baby was so active, I tried to smile. “That’s good, right?” She said nothing.

I continued to stare at the green and cream border on the walls. There was a large calendar just opposite the exam table, turned to the month of April. It was a calendar with platitudes written across a beautiful sunrise background, things like “Live, laugh, love” and “Every act of kindness grows the spirit and strengthens the soul,” things people put up on refurbished shiplap in their homes.

I read the words on the April graphic of a generic sunrise, or a sweetly blooming daffodil, and swallowed too loudly. I wondered if she could hear my heart beating against my bones. I wondered if she was judging me, my silence, my lack of questions or exclamations or rambunctious joy. I wondered if she had even registered my face before hunting for my child’s.

I prayed in that room, lying in that anxious horizontal position, my hands tickled by the paper they roll onto exam tables. God spoke one thing back, something I have forgotten until the writing of this book, something I proclaimed for a week or two, until the diagnosis, until the end and the beginning: “She can never tell you something about this person I do not already know.”

YOU GUYS.

I know it’s a cliff-hanger, I know. But this is an actual excerpt from Forgiving God: A Story of Faithand you need to get it right this minute so you can read her story.

Hilary Yancey loves good words, good questions, and sunny afternoons sitting on her front porch with a strong cup of tea. She and her husband, Preston, and their two children, Jack and Junia, live in Waco, Texas where Hilary is completing her Ph.D. in philosophy at Baylor University.

Her first book, Forgiving God: A Story of Faith is available wherever fine books are sold (Amazon, Barnes & Noble) – and you can hear Hilary read the audiobook, too!

P.S. After her son was born, Hilary posted this photo on her Instagram. I have never forgotten the stunning and compelling novel that her beautiful face expresses without saying a word. It is exquisite and sacred and I will never forget it.

Out of all the decisions in this world we have control over, there is definitely one whole category of our lives we can’t predict, manage, or bullet point.

No matter how organized we get, how much we plan, how prepared we are for what might come, one thing we can always count on is that the people in our life will surprise us, delight us, disappoint us, overwhelm us, or confuse us.

We can manage our time, our work, and our agendas but we cannot manage relationships. At least, not if we want them to be healthy.

How do we move forward in love? How can we discern a next right step with the people in our lives when they can be so unpredictable and. . . people-y?

For anyone who wants to remember some basic but often overlooked foundational truths about relating with people, I give you this — A Soul Minimalist’s Guide to Relationships.

Release your agenda.

Why is this one so simple and so hard!?

When one of our girls experienced a profound disappointment in her life (she was in fourth grade so gauge your imagination accordingly), I struggled as her mom to balance wanting to teach her a lesson and just wanting to be with her.

It’s true, learning is good and disappointments are an opportunity for growth. But I’ve grown weary of trying to squeeze a lesson out of everything, of always asking what God is trying to teach me in every circumstance, of seeing the world through lesson-colored glasses and forcing struggling people to do that, too.

Instead, when it comes to discerning your next right thing in relationships, releasing your agenda is a good place to start.

Let’s practice walking into the great mystery of God. Let’s practice encountering Jesus as a person and not a character. Let’s practice releasing our agenda to perform, perfect, and prioritize. Let’s live this day as a daughter first and allow the student to tag along behind.

Look for arrows, not answers.

So often, the questions we have in life that give us trouble aren’t the daily ones like what to wear, what to eat, when to mow the grass (although these can become burdensome if we’re already struggling with decision fatigue).

In my experience, the situations where I most desperately want an answer are the ones that are the hardest to find. These usually have to do with things like faith, vocation, and relationships.

My husband John and I went through a vocational transition about five years ago. No only did we not have answers, every question we asked seemed to birth more questions. What we discovered over that several year-long transition was we were looking for the wrong thing.

Rather than a specific plan, God offered us his hand and led us not to clear answers but simply back to one another. It was one of the most life-changing periods of our lives and it didn’t come from a five step agenda but from listening and looking for arrows to our next right step.

“Sometimes the circumstances at hand force us to be braver than we actually are, and so we knock on doors and ask for assistance. Sometimes not having any idea where we’re going works out better than we could possibly have imagined.” — Ann Patchett, What Now?

Come home to yourself.

As difficult as it may be to admit, sometimes it’s easier to focus on every relationship except the one I’m guaranteed to have for the rest of my living life – the one between me and myself. It doesn’t seem right since we are already so good at thinking of ourselves first, wondering what people are thinking of us, and basically being our own point of reference in all situations.

Maybe relief from selfishness won’t be found in denying ourselves the way we tend to think of it, but to finally become ourselves the way we were intended to be. Not the false, try-hard, self-referential version, but the true, free self who is created in the image of God.

The only person you’re guaranteed to be with every day of your life is you. So maybe it’s time to make some peace. You don’t have to fly apart in the midst of chaos. You can learn to sit down on the inside and be at home with yourself instead.

“It’s a wild and wonderful thing to bump into someone and realize it’s you.”

Choose connection.

When it comes to relating with people, whether it’s family or strangers, how we enter a room can mean the difference between connecting with them or comparing ourselves to them. If I walk in and immediately wonder, What are they thinking of me? then I have automatically made comparison a top priority.

Contrary to what we often say about connection and chemistry, the truth is connection doesn’t normally just happen. We have to actively choose to set aside our own insecurities and move toward people without an agenda or a measuring stick.

I’m not sure how it is that I get so lucky as to host some of the most beautiful writing on the Internet, but this is what keeps happening when I have a guest writer. Today it is my privilege to host Hilary Yancey. I didn’t realize how much I needed to read this. May it be true for you as well.

Two days before my wedding, my mom drove me through the winding streets of downtown Ipswich, taking the longest possible route to our Starbucks (I think we must all have this kind of place, this large but anonymous place that becomes our own). We ordered passion tea lemonades. We ordered cookies and those vanilla bean scones my mother always acknowledges are going to be dry, but eats anyway.

We lingered for so long in the parking lot until there wasn’t any more time; my sister had planned a bachelorette dinner and so off I went, into the future – a future that I painted as full of new roles—wife, graduate student, Texan, mother—but somehow had left out the colors for daughter.

When my son was born, I reentered a need for my mother. She came to the quiet campfire of NICU monitors and again to bake blueberry muffins in a borrowed kitchen for Christmas morning brunch. She sat with me for hours as I pumped milk for Jack, she read and knitted and kept watch with me while I held him as he slept on me, time after time.

And then when the seasons had waved their spindly fingers and we were back in September, my son turning one and my heart learning that depression had been walking alongside me, unannounced, my mother came again. She came to drink tea, to sit with cheese and crackers on the porch swing in the fading October sun. She came to sit with me and puzzle the weight of such change. She found a Starbucks on campus to make our own for a day or two.

Becoming a mother taught me to be a daughter again. To let the bones and muscles that had pulled and pushed my son into the world sink into her familiar mattress on a Saturday morning; to let the sun that streams through the ancient windows of the second story of my childhood home warm my face and lull me to sleep.

Almost three years from the frenzied weeks of my wedding and I went home for a few days alone. My mother and I took a long drive to our Starbucks and went back an even longer way, talking just fast and just slow enough.

We drank chai lattes and chose pumpkin bread over the vanilla scones. We stopped at Plum Island beach just because. We walked freezing along the edge of the country and saw the wilderness of water in its misting, grey-blue activity. The wind cut at our cheeks and we both needed a hat. We thrust our hands in our pockets and my Toms filled with sand, the hours fading in the brightness of being who we are to each other: mother, and daughter, friend and friend.

Is it a long myth of growing up, that we cease to be children? We cannot be anything without first being someone’s child; we cannot outgrow that first and softest skin; we need not.

“Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!” (Luke 13:34, NRSV)

Hilary Yancey is mama to Jack, wife to Preston and in the midst of getting a PhD in philosophy from Baylor University.

When she isn’t chasing an idea, a busy toddler, or learning the first few steps in her adult beginner ballet class, you can find her writing at her blog The Wild Love or on Instagram at @hilaryyancey.

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One more thing: there is a photo that was taken moments after Hilary’s son Jack was born and it’s one I will never, ever forget. I remember where I was when I saw it for the first time, that is how powerful it is. (Okay so I scroll back through her Instagram from time to time just to see it, sue me.) Whenever I see it now, even though I know it’s coming, I still tear up because her face and that moment, well. It is exquisite.

Of all the gradual things in this life, watching as your kids grow up is perhaps one of the most curious. It can also be a difficult or delightful experience, depending on the day, my mood, the state of their room, and the weather.

But bearing witness to their growing up is proving to be essential to my own spiritual formation in ways I never new to expect.

For the past few years, I’ve been looking for a line they tell me doesn’t exist. But like the gathering moments of darkness in morning just between the release of the light, there is a time of sunrise.

You can see it on your phone if you check.

One moment the sun is not visible and the next, you need to pull out your sunglasses. Yes, it’s gradual. But there is still a moment. It is distinct. You can see it with your eyes and feel it in your bones.

Something has shifted. We’ve crossed from darkness into light.

Unlike the sunrise, I can’t check my phone for the moment when my little kids became big kids but it’s rearranging me. They were babies then toddlers then kindergarten age. We made it all the way through elementary school with the twins and now one more year of middle school.

See, I’ve already passed it.

I’ve been carrying that change for a few years now. I haven’t known what it would mean to name it, to point to it and say there. This is why you have a shadow of joy and questions slung over your heart.

Transition is like that. They tell me it keeps going into your 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s. Each decade has it’s own set of transitions.

I turn 40 next month and it’s strange to sit in this place between the decade when my children were toddlers and the one when they will graduate from college. I stand here with my back turned on those days, in many ways; facing the future while holding the past. I’m still clumsy with the weight of it. It’s an awkward load to bear.

And so while there isn’t a moment to point to, I think I may have found a hint.

It was the end of 5th grade and the twins had their first school dance, the kind where the cafeteria windows are covered up with black paper and parents aren’t allowed inside, only teachers.

As we walked up to the school building, other boys and girls rushed past us to push their way through the doors. My girls quickly found friends and, eager to see what their regular public school cafeteria looked like transformed into a dance floor, they pushed their way in, too, and didn’t look back, the door swiftly closing behind them, blocked by a smiling 5th grade teacher.

That was the line, right there between the painted blue cinder block hallway and the suped-up public school cafeteria.

The line was the moment they didn’t look back.

I vaguely remember a surprised oh releasing from my lips, but after that I had no words.

I turned around, my eyes stinging with tears I didn’t know to prepare for. I caught the eye of another mom and we may have walked back to our cars together, the silence between us holding all the words we couldn’t say out loud yet.

We didn’t yet know what had just happened. But we had crossed over a line.

Last week I took a break from my work while the kids where in school and went to grab lunch. Instead of going straight home, I parked my car in a lot, faced the field, pulled out the turkey and avocado to eat, and promptly burst into tears.

As it turned out, I was parked in the lot in front of the grocery store where I used to shop when the twins were first born. The field is mostly a parking lot now, but the sky looks the same there and it sent me weeping. Sobbing. Shocked.

It’s been over two years since that night at the dance and I’ve only just now begun to find the words for what it feels like when your kids are growing up.

Well I guess that’s not quite right. I can’t speak to what it feels like in general. I can only tell you what it feels like for me.

It feels like torn lace, like smoke, like wedding mints melting on your tongue.

It feels like distraction, like worry, like chasing but not-quite-catching or trying to remember but seeing only through foggy panes.

It feels like wider hips and thinner lips and laugh lines starting to show up around curved edges.

It feels like biting my cheeks when I see a younger mom with her baby because I don’t want to be that old lady who says hold them tight, they grow so fast, blah, blah, blah.

But that’s what I’ll think even though I know better than to say it.

And the thing is, she’ll think it one day, too. It’s what moms do.

Those days were hard, hard, hard. I know this. But they are also gone.

It feels like I won a ticket for the best seat in the house, but I was gone too long during intermission and missed part of the show. Or did I sleep through it? Or maybe I saw it all but just forgot a lot of the details.

It feels like both sorrow and joy.

It feels like a lump in my throat.

It feels like freedom, too.

And sometimes that part is hard for a mom to bear. Because now we have a little space to think, even though there’s still a lot to do.

They are becoming themselves now and if we’re paying attention, so are we. This is good and right. But can also feel confusing. You mean we’re still growing up even though we’re grown?

Yes, that’s right.

So maybe I’ll write another book or five. Maybe I’ll try something new, learn a skill I never had the moxie for, take up dancing.

Welcome to mid-life, mom.

Now my kids are the big kids, my kids are the ones who watch the other people’s little kids. All three of my kids have feet bigger than mine.

I hold on to the hope that there is still a lot ahead of us. I can hear the moms who have come before me saying it to me now. Your kids are still small! They say it because theirs are even older.

I know, I know.

It’s true, our youngest still plays with cars on the floor, still wants me to watch him jump. But the days are numbered. They always have been, but the numbers are more obvious now that there are more behind me than before me.

And so I stand on tip-toe and peer into our future and I see good things, I can’t help it. In many ways, I suppose I’ve crossed the line already. But I also know there will be other lines to come.

Aren’t we always standing on a line between what was and what will be?

We are all in the midst of our own transitions, our own acceptance, our own becoming. Let’s be kind with our fellow moms and not expect them to enjoy a stage that we ourselves couldn’t fully embrace until later.

Let’s be the kind of friends who walk beside even if we’re further along or behind. Let’s be that for each other and let’s be kind to ourselves as well.

All we have is this day, this great right now. Let’s look around, let’s be all here if we can, and give ourselves permission to grieve what we need to grieve and to not be afraid.

If you are a human and are seeing this field, please leave it blank.

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For the last eight years, I’ve been working from home. I started off writing on a blog as a hobby but I eventually decided to write a book.

That book led to three more books, speaking engagements, co-running a membership site, a podcast, and my own online course. Now writing is my full-time job and it all happens right here in my house.

All the while, my three kids and my husband are people who need to be clothed and fed, not to mention seen and loved.

As much as I love the flexibility of working from home, sometimes I long for the clear lines a drive to the office in the morning seem to offer. But we are figuring out how to make this whole “Mom works from home, where are their socks, meet that deadline, boil the water, finish the laundry, write this book chapter, record those videos in the closet, sign their homework papers” thing work.

Here are five ways I stay productive while I work from home.

1. Craft purpose in the dark but plan in the light.

If I don’t have a clear vision or purpose for my work (either short term or long term work), I feel like a crazy person. Add laundry and home chaos to all of that and it’s goodbye forever to productivity.

What I’ve found works best is to craft my purpose and vision in the dark hours – either morning before anyone wakes up or evening after they all go to bed. Then, when John and I schedule our week together while the kids are eating breakfast, our step-by-step plans can be made and followed in the daytime.

If I try to craft a plan for my day before I’ve developed a vision for my work, I’ll be planning for stuff I might not even value. It’s like trying to organize your house of clutter. Where do I put this sock that has no match!

Instead, clear out the clutter first, discover your purpose and vision in the quiet hours so that you can execute a plan that aligns with your vision.

2. Trade the to-do list for a done list.

I’ve been making to-do lists since middle school. As my fellow list-lovers know, one of the greatest discouragements after a days work is when the list remains largely un-checked. Over the last six months or so, I’ve changed the way I make my lists.

I have a large list for the week of things I need to finish. But when I sit down to my work for the day, I have a blank page next to me with my tasks in mind.

I write one task on the page with a box next to it and I work on that one task only. When it’s finished, I check it off and only then do I write down the next task.

This has been unicorn magic for me because at the end of my work session, I have a fat checked off list rather than a sad, anemic one. Progress!

3. Face away from the room.

If you only have an hour in the day to work, you can’t spend it looking at all the mess in your house because inevitably, you will put your work off until you can just tidy up the living room real quick. Soon that turns into cleaning out the closets.

Ask me how I know. Never mind, don’t ask.

Easiest solution: sit to work in a spot where you see as little of the room as possible. When I realized how much of my mental energy was spent cleaning my house (even only in my head!) I immediately turned my desk around to face the window.

Twenty seconds and done.

If you have a desk, face the window. If you work from the kitchen table, choose the seat so you can’t see the sink.

Force yourself to face away from your house while you work so you don’t get distracted.

4. Clear the surfaces.

If you can’t escape the mess of your house, the very most I allow myself to do during work times is to clear the surfaces. My sister, The Nester, taught me two golden rules of clean surfaces:

Soapy Rags: A hot, soapy rag goes a long way on a kitchen table. If the kitchen is a mess, just clean the table off real good, sit down, face the window and ignore the rest of the house.

Make Mine Pretty: This means if you have a choice between two equal things, why not choose the pretty one?

Case in point: soap. John buys the fluorescent blue brand of soap that looks like space poison.

I buy Mrs. Meyers with beautiful scents and lovely packaging.

It sits on our counter out in the clear blue open. Why not choose the pretty one?

5. Take a walk.

Since I spend a lot of my work time on my computer, I try to do things that are the opposite of the internet when I start to feel like a robot.

One of my favorite productivity boosts is to take a short break from my work and walk around the block. I leave my phone at home and practice walking without an agenda. It’s the best 12-minute re-boot I’ve found.

Sometimes our minds need time to process our realities, even when our reality is obvious to everyone else. No amount of lecture or explanation will help us to see something until we’re ready to see it for ourselves.

That’s why it’s possible to be the last one to know you’re in love with that guy you’ve been hanging out with. And when you finally admit it, everyone in your life is like, Duh we’ve known that for months.

It’s why when you finally admit it’s time for you to quit your job or change majors or start something new, often times people in your life just nod their head knowingly, relieved you’ve finally realized what they’ve known for months.

Several years ago, I was that person who didn’t realize something that seemed obvious to everyone else.

I had already written two books and was working on my third before I finally realized, Oh. I’m a working mom.

I still remember the moment it happened. I walked up the hill to our house after taking the girls to school, considering all the things I had to do that day.

Other things were work-type things: finish those photo edits, turn in that thing my publisher asked for, write that article, prepare a post.

I could feel my heart rhythm speed up as I picked up the pace to the front door. My breathing got a little bit more shallow than it had been, my craving for coffee shot through the roof.

When I begin to feel the weight of this pressure, I become the opposite of productive. That morning in particular I had been feeling this weight more than usual.

I would do things like wash a load of towels, and then forget about them until the next morning when I would have to wash the same load again because hello, they stink now.

In short, I was stretched too thin and didn’t fully know why.

It wasn’t until that moment when I was loading the dishwasher while I was also planning out an email response in my head that I heard this phrase ping light a lightbulb: Emily, you have a job.

I know it sounds crazy to not know that, but when you work from home, you can believe the illusion for a long time that you are a stay-at-home mom.

It was especially tricky because when I agreed to write a book and partner with a publisher, it didn’t feel like a job in the way my past jobs felt like jobs because I didn’t go to an office, meet with HR, or have to clock in or out.

I didn’t have workmates or a cubicle or paid time off. I didn’t even have a boss, not really.

The lines between home and work were hard to see and I was the one who had to draw them. At that time, I wasn’t drawing them well simply because I didn’t realize I needed to.

The result for me was frustration, overwhelm, and the feeling that I was trying to do everything but not doing any of it well.

On a good day, I could only do most of it by half.

Admitting I had a job required a bit of grieving for me personally. Looking back, I never planned to start working when I did. I just did the next right thing and each of those next-right-things ended up leading to several book contracts.

Those book contracts were a gift and the income I’ve been able to generate mostly from home has blessed our family.

But even good things come with shadows, and I’m learning to hold both the gifts as well as the burdens. For me, admitting I had a job was an obvious important first step. And it was that first step that led to some much needed freedom for me.

After that, my conversations with John changed. The way I looked at our schedule changed. And most importantly, I became kinder toward myself, realizing the only person who expected me to do “it all” was me.

Motherhood is a sacred work all by itself. For those of us who have another job on top of the full time work of mothering, we have to be vigilant about the shame and expectations we might be carrying around.

We have good work to do with our jobs as mothers, writers, teachers, bankers, doctors, accountants, and friends. If you’d need some help or perspective to do your good work better, my dear friend Jessica Turner is a mom who knows about work and life integration more than just about anyone. And she’s created an online course for us at a fantastic price, especially if you’re like I was and feeling stretched too thin.

Check out Stretched Too Thin right here and don’t miss the bundle of lovely bonuses available as well. *These links are affiliate links and I’m pleased to partner with Jessica as she supports working moms in this way.

When it comes to finding God in ordinary places, no one does it better than Christie Purifoy. The first time I read her writing, it felt like coming home. I found her book, Roots and Sky, during a time when I felt stuck and unable to read any other writing. Somehow her personal journey to find home turned into a spiritually informative pilgrimage for my own soul. I’m thrilled to welcome her here today.

I have always been a follow-the-rules, keep-it-under-control, anxious-to-please kind of girl. Which means I am, more often than not, anxious.

The hum of impending disaster is the white noise of my day. Whether weeding my garden or reading a bedtime book, I am on high alert: for the cough that might be asthma, the rose bush harboring some soon-to-multiply pest, the crock pot I must remember to fill and start at 11 am exactly. And woven in and out of these small, weedy worries are the invasive vines of my anxiety: the writing deadline, the big decision, the older child who seems, unusually and inexplicably, sad.

If the moment is without crisis, then it is up to me to keep it so.

I have been given a spacious place, but my eyes are always scanning the horizon. The sky over my home is a clear blue dome, yet I struggle for the air to breathe.

Because the whole world rests on my shoulders, I am enormous. The place where I am is always crowded.

Yet I remember moments of grace. I can recall seasons of freedom and rest.

Almost thirteen years ago I became a mother. Having crossed that threshold with a textbook “difficult” baby in my arms, I was overwhelmed by an experience that was entirely beyond my ability to control or determine. The weight of one small daughter was enough to pull the world from my shoulders, and the sign of my new brokenness came in tears.

For three or four years I was always just on the edge of tears.

Those years were hard but how good it was to be weak, needy, and helpless. I accepted that I was in control of none of it, and so there was room within each day for so many tiny wonders.

Her first smile.

The way she fit, just so, in the crook of my arm.

That little streak of white-blonde hair on her otherwise dark head.

She and I both grew, and my tears dried. Three more babies joined their older sister, and every year I harvested another crop of worries. I grew large again, and the shadow cast by that world on my shoulders obliterated all the tiny, wonderful things.

Now, even breathing feels outside my control. This is good news. The only job I have to do, my one responsibility, is to whisper thank you.

For four months I have been on the verge of tears. I do not even realize they are there, but I step into the shower or I close myself into the silence of my car, and I find them. Just there. Waiting for me.

Once again, I am small. I cannot change or determine the big, important things.

But here again are the tiny wonders.

Here are the moments of pure beauty and grace: a silly text from my niece, the first peony in the garden, the grass-green taste of asparagus I grew myself.

It hurts to be sifted by sorrow, and I can glimpse no end to the hurt, and yet I find myself grateful. To be sifted by suffering is to find that all your usual worries have settled down into their proper places. Large uncertainties land in your prayers, plans for the future edge your daydreams, and the small anxieties that once loomed so large on your shoulders float down and far away where they look like just what they are: the dust beneath your feet.

Now lift your eyes and look around you.

Here, at last, is room for each given breath. The doorway is wet with tears, yet this is a spacious place and a land of small wonders.

Christie Purifoy earned a PhD in English Literature at the University of Chicago before trading the classroom for a farmhouse, a garden, and a blog.

Today I’m thankful to welcome Alexandra Kuykendall, a writer I’ve had the privilege of meeting, to listen and learn first-hand how genuine she is. I read (and endorsed!) her first book, The Artist’s Daughter, and now she has a second book out in the world, Loving My Actual Life. Thankful for her reminder to shake our addiction to hustle.

When did rushing become such a thing in my life? I think it was when my kids became busy, with lessons and practices and schedules of their own. But no, I remember busy before that. Maybe when my babies were born and I was meeting others’ needs all of the time? No, I know I had the hustle before that too.

When I was full on career girl, yes busy then. I almost can’t remember a time when I wasn’t trying hard to catch the finish line. Perhaps in my childhood there were times when I didn’t put the rush on. But as an adult, trying to calm it all in has been a way of life.

We live in an incredible era of opportunity for women. But I think we’ve misunderstood our newfound choice as a people, especially a female people.

We are not choosing anything; we are trying to do it all.

Because with a choice we must say “no” to something in order to say “yes” to something else. You choose one thing over another. But I find I’m instead saying “yes” to everything.

And that way of operating forgets that I have limits. My days have twenty-four hours no matter how much I try to cram into them. My body needs fuel and sleep. I try to deprive it of both. My soul must have quiet, though I live a nonstop existence of information consumption. My soul doesn’t do well in the hustle.

It’s no surprise that a hustler is one who tricks and lies. That’s exactly what the hustle does, it lies to us about what’s important and what makes us important. The busier, the better, right? The more productive, the more valuable. It’s the American way. Protestant work ethic and all.

Yet the truth teller squeezes in between me and the lies and whispers this, “Come.”

“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.”

Or, “Come to me all those toiling and bearing burdens….” Our work makes us weary. Our toiling creates even more burden. Our hustle makes more work.

The opposite of lies is truth.

The opposite of hustle is come.

It is a moving toward. And if we’re truly weary, it is a falling toward. A collapsing really, toward the one who gives rest.

In my little life experiment of how better to do life, I started with the hustle. I knew I needed to quit it. Like any addiction, it was telling me I couldn’t live without it. And yet what I truly couldn’t live without, in every sense, was him. The Prince of Peace. Emmanuel, God with us.

Pulling the Band-Aid off hurts. Whether done quickly or methodically. We all have our preferences, perhaps we fall into categories of fast or slow people. No matter, we are all prone to the busy. The hustle is simply an overextension of what we can humanly bare and pretending we can do more than we actually can.

A Band-Aid does not heal. It simply covers.

As is true with the over extending and with the people-pleasing. Or more accurately, people-impressing. With the saying “yes” past the limits of our human capabilities. We use the hustle to cover the hurt, to avoid the injuries of the heart, the parts of our actual lives we want to avoid.

Sometimes it’s easier to look at a Band-Aid than to examine the wound.

I had to do it, this hustle quitting, this pulling off the Band-Aid, in the context of my actual life, the one that has five other people to feed thas work deadlines and soccer games and a parent transitioning fulltime to a wheelchair. I needed to separate the essential from the extra. And for a girl who finds the hustle tempting, even addicting, I needed to stop.

So that is where I began the experiment to love my actual life. By stopping.

I did not want to miss this one life I’ve been gifted. This one day. There is no promise for tomorrow.

We are called to meet Emmanuel here, in the nitty gritty of our ordinary surrounded by our actual circumstances.

“For I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do everything through him who gives me strength.” –Phillipians 4:11-13

It’s May, what I like to call work-with-the-windows-open-in-my-office month. Now I can hear the community sounds as they rise up to greet me at my desk – the distant lawn mower, the mailman pulling up into the cul-de-sac, kids laughing from the trampoline, bark-gossip between neighboring dogs.

Sometime during the past week or two, newborn baby cries have joined the neighborhood chorus.

Our backdoor neighbor paces their yard several times a day holding their newest member. Through the trees I can’t always tell if it’s the Mom or the Dad, but I always know it’s the baby – short wails and baby hiccups give her right away.

I think these sounds mixed with the arrival of Her Royal Highness Princess Charlotte of Cambridge have me thinking back kindly on the early days of having a new baby.

But I’m no fool.

Motherhood is both miracle and madness.

And so here is a toast for all the mamas everywhere during this week before Mother’s Day. It’s not the first or the best ode to mothers on the internet, but the words came to mind this morning and so I offer them to you:

Here’s to you, dear mama, with the tired eyes, the impossible schedule, and the sour milk smell all over your clothes.

Here’s to you with the PBS cartoons in the background, eating a handful of goldfish and calling it lunch, with the toddler who just learned the word mine and won’t stop secreting bodily fluids from all of their orifices.

Here’s to you who negotiates bedtimes and snack times with a special kind of finesse, the likes of which Wall Street and Washington have never seen.

Here’s to you who would gladly and without hesitation jump in front of a bus for your children but, for the love, cannot manage to find the energy to make one more PB & J.

Here’s to you leaving work early to pick up ginger ale and saltines for his upset tummy and digging through the trash for the accidentally discarded lovey.

Heres’s to you buying poster board at the only open drug store at 11 pm because someone forgot to mention that science fair project.

Here’s to you making the ten thousandth school lunch, driving them to practice, trying to remember the multiplication tables while you make the dinner they probably won’t eat.

Here’s to you asking for help, letting someone else do the laundry and take them to swim practice because you need a minute.

Here’s to you who fights off guilt, comparison, and shame.

Here’s to you who chooses love, laughter, and a light-heart every chance you get.

Here’s to you who is raising them up all by yourself, doing the job of two parents with the energy of only one.

Here’s to you praying for their friendships, playing in the backyard, buying shoes again.

Here’s to you who doesn’t always have the answers to the endless questions, the patience for their constant demands, or the words to communicate just how much you love them.

Here’s to you cringing in the passenger seat, staying up til curfew, making pizza for bottomless stomachs.

Here’s to you cheering on the sidelines, laughing at their humor, counting down the days.

Here’s to you straightening the bow tie, listening in doorways, braiding her hair.

Here’s to you making reservations, holding up a camera, waving from the driveway.

Here’s to you who prays in the darkness, longs for connection, hopes for the future, and always wants what’s best.

Here’s to you, dear mama, who no longer has children in your house but holds them always in your heart, who leaves backdoors open wide and arms open wider.

Here’s to you – sisters, aunties, grandmas and friends – who do the mother work as you listen, cheer, help, and walk with children in ways only you can do.

Here’s to you who longs for the children you don’t yet have or children you now only hold in your heart.

Here’s to your courage, creativity, and faith.

I raise my coffee mug to you.

And maybe a wine glass or two.

You are exquisite.

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